Sleep talking
by ginnyisdacoolest
Summary: Because even villains have nightmares. Riddler/Scarecrow non-slash.


**A/N: This story is set a while after my other Batman fanfic 'Idiosyncrasies', but you don't have to have read it to read this one :) It references 'Arkham Asylum' the video game and 'The Dark Knight', but it's in the comics section because I base my characters more off the ones from the comics.**

Sleep talking

A lot of the patients in Arkham Asylum talked in their sleep. In fact, so frequent were the interruptions to the relative peace at night in the asylum that some doctors had taken to leaving a tape recorder close by to use in their analysis. Two Face could sometimes be heard exclaiming apparently random phrases in the gruff, edgy voice of his dominant alter-ego, which only made sense when you realised the gaps in between the non-sequitors were being filled in silently by his almost completely subdued other half. Arnold Wesker, also known as The Ventriloquist, was near catatonic during the day without his puppet Scarface, and only spoke at night, murmuring in his dreams.

And it was common knowledge to anyone in or around the medium security wing that Patient 41B, Edward Nashton, had nightmares. No one mentioned it; the staff out of respect for his privacy, and an odd sort of embarrassment; the other patients because when you're locked up with a know-it-all like the Riddler, it can be liberating to know something he doesn't know you know.

It was ex-psychiatrist Jonathon Crane who broke the silence regarding the nightmares. He'd been put in Edward's cell after his last escape. The folks in charge of deciding who went where must have thought they'd go well together, since the Scarecrow was one of the few patients in the wing who the Riddler hadn't managed to piss off in some way or another.

It was just past midnight, though Crane didn't know the precise time since there was no clock in sight. It annoyed him slightly, but he was too preoccupied with his latest plan in the making to care that much. He grinned in the dark as the amusing and often sadistic thoughts drifted through his head, sometimes formulating into actual ideas.

And then he was distracted by the sounds of his cellmate shifting in his cot and moaning slightly. _Here we go_, Crane thought to himself. He caught catches of speech muttered in the sleeper's unrest. One in particular caught his attention:

"I…I don't know….oh god, I don't know….!" Even if he no longer had a license, Crane still had several years of training and several more years of sick fascination with fear behind him, and he decided to ask about it when his cell-mate woke up. But Nashton seemed to be slipping back into sleep. Scarecrow scowled; he'd probably have forgotten it come morning. He patted at himself automatically for something to write on, even though the Arkham overalls had no pockets and he doubted the guards would take kindly to being called over for a pencil. Not after the Joker…

Reaching down to the floor by the bed, Crane picked up one of the slippers that lay there and hurled it at his cellmate's head. Edward woke up with a start, almost falling over the edge of the cot. One might point out that he could have been woken more gently, but if Jonathon Crane was the type to wake someone gently, he wouldn't have been Jonathon Crane.

"What the hell?" Edward yelled, though he muffled his voice slightly because of the guards, "What did you do that for?

Jonathon Crane lay back on his cot, pausing nonchalantly before speaking.

"Oh, nothing much."

Edward gritted his teeth, but he had pulled himself together enough to make his customary snide remark.

"I'd have thought _you_ could find a considerably more _cerebral_ method of waking me than lobbing a shoe at my face."

"So..." Crane started, completely ignoring the comment, "What were you dreaming about, then?"

Nashton did a surprisingly good job of keeping his face and voice neutral.

"Sorry, don't know what you're talking about. Could you elaborate?"

Crane laughed softly. "Wow, I never thought I'd say this to you, but don't play dumb."

"I'm not."

"Oh really? Why were you talking in your sleep then?"

Edward made a stab at another comment "Maybe you should tell Dr Smith to put 'auditory hallucinations' down as one..."

"_I don't know, oh god I don't know!"_ Crane mimicked. He was disturbingly good at impressions. Then in his normal voice, he asked "So, what didn't you know?"

Edward sighed resignedly, and propped himself up against the wall. Most of the gray, holed-filled blanket had been thrown off during his tossing and turning, and now he pushed it off entirely, revealing skinny legs in gray prison clothing. Crane could just see a thin, white scar on the back of one knee, probably from an encounter with the Batman. It was stitched up professionally though. Trust Nashton to find someone other than his hench girls to stitch him up even when he's on the run. Perhaps he'd used another fake name.

"The answer." he eventually replied. For a normally verbose man he didn't seem overly keen to elaborate, so Crane probed further.

"The answer to what, exactly?"

"The riddle." Aware of his vagueness, and God forbid he appear inarticulate, he added "I dreamt I was being questioned by the Sphinx. 'What stands on four legs in the morning…'"

"'…two at noon and three in the evening'? I've heard it; everyone has. And _you_ don't know the answer?"

His cellmate glared at him. Crane had seen that glare. He'd had patients give him that glare. It said 'How _dare_ you insult my intelligence.'

"I know the answer _now_. It's a human being, or a baby if you're trying to creep out your psychiatrist." This last part was punctuated with a smirk. Crane smiled along with him; he'd heard about the incident.

Then he was thoughtful for a moment. He was torn between further analysis and ridicule.

"Hmm," he said eventually, "wasn't _Oedipus _Rex posed that question by the Sphinx?"

Edward was hardly slow on the uptake, but it took him a moment or so to get the reference. He groaned audibly when he did.

"Oh you are _not _going Freudian on me. I don't even think about my dad anymore unless my idiot doctor tries to make me, and as for my…" he shook his head vigorously to ward off the mental images that were now being conjured, infuriated at how the ex-doctor had gotten into his head in only a couple of sentences. "I am going back to sleep."

He rolled over and was silent for about fifteen minutes, before piping up again.

"You still awake?"

There was silence from the other cot. Nashton rolled over and said "I know you're awake. When you're asleep, you snore. Goodnight."


End file.
